Frivolities, Especially Addressed to Those Who Are Tired of Being Serious

"By-! if you say that again I'll knock the life right out of you!"

The foreman rapped upon the table.

"Order, gentlemen, order! Keep to the business in hand, if you please."

Mr. Longsett confronted him, towering over Elliott, with clenched fists and flashing eyes.

"Keep him in order then-don't keep on at me! You make him keep a civil tongue in his head, or I will." He glared round the board. "I don't care for the whole damned lot of you. I'm as good as any one of you-perhaps better! I'm here to do my duty according to my conscience and conviction, and I'm going to do it, and I say not guilty, and if we stop here till Christmas you won't make me say no different!"

This announcement was followed by an interval of silence; then Captain Rudd attempted to voice the sense of the meeting.

"In that case, Mr. Foreman, we may as well intimate to the court that we are unable to agree."

"What'll be the consequence of that?"

"The prisoner'll have to stand another trial, when, should none of his relations happen to be upon the jury, there will be no hesitation about bringing in a verdict of guilty-in which case the young scamp will get his deserts."

Stretching his body across the table, Jacob shook his clenched fist in the speaker's face.

"Look here, Captain Rudd, you may be a captain, but you're no blooming gentleman, or you wouldn't talk like that. Captain or no captain, the next time you say anything about Jim Bailey being a relation of mine I'll crack you in the mouth!" Straightening himself, Jacob shook his fist at the eleven. "And I say the same to every one of you. It's no affair of yours what Jim Bailey is to me-so just you mind it."

The captain curled, at the same time, his lip and his moustache, his bearing conveying the scorn which he doubtless felt.

"If you suppose, sir, that I shall allow you to play the common bully with impunity, you are mistaken. You forget yourself, my man!"

"Oh, no! I don't forget myself-it's you who forgot yourself. And as for playing the common bully, it's you began it. You're trying to bully me when you taunt me with Jim Bailey being my relation; you think if you keep it on long enough you'll frighten me into acting against my sense of duty."

The foreman intervened sharply: "Order! Mr. Longsett, your language is improper and irregular; if you are not careful I shall have to report it to the court."

"It's no more improper and irregular than theirs is. We're here to say guilty or not guilty, not to pry into each other's private affairs. If they don't make no personal remarks, I shan't."

"Listen to reason, Mr. Longsett. Do I understand, Mr. Plummer, that you will acquiesce in a verdict of guilty if we prefer a recommendation to the court that the case shall be treated under the First Offenders Act?"

"You are at liberty to so understand, Mr. Grice."

"And you, Mr. Longsett? If we are unable to agree the prisoner will have to go back to prison, and, on his again standing his trial, I have no hesitation in saying that he will be found guilty, when he will be likely to receive much less lenient treatment than now, when we are ready and willing to recommend him to mercy."

"We're going to agree."

"That's good hearing. You agree to a verdict of guilty, coupled with a recommendation to mercy?"

"I don't do nothing of the kind."

"Then what do you agree to?"

"I agree to a verdict of not guilty-that's what I agree to."

"Then, in that case, we're likely to disagree. You can hardly expect eleven men to go against the weight of evidence for the sake of agreeing with you."

"There's no hurry that I knows on. We'll wait a bit. I have heard of juries being locked up for eight-and-forty hours. I daresay before that time some of you'll have changed your minds. Seems to me that there's three or four already that can change their minds as easy as winking." He began, with a certain amount of ostentation, to untie the string which bound his brown paper parcel. "I'm getting peckish. If you don't mind, Mr. Foreman, we'll talk things over while I'm eating."

The unfolding of the paper revealed the fact that it contained a comfortable number of succulent-looking sandwiches. The eleven eyed them-and their owner-sourly. Carefully taking the top one of the heap between his finger and his thumb Mr. Longsett took a bite at it. Seldom has the process of attacking a sandwich had a more attentive audience.

"I say, Jacob," observed Mr. Timmins, "aren't you going to give me one?"

"What, give you the food from between my own lips! Not if I know it. We may be here till this time to-morrow. I've got to think of myself, Mr. Timmins."

"I'm not going to stop here till this time to-morrow, Jacob Longsett!"

As he spoke old Parkes banged his fist upon the table.

"All right, George Parkes, nobody asked you to, so far as I know. Seems to me you're uncommon keen to send the lad to gaol."

"I don't wish the lad no harm."

"Seems to me as how you do."

"I say I don't!"

Mr. Parkes punctuated each of his remarks with a bang upon the board.

"Then why don't you do what you've sworn to do, and bring him in not guilty along of me?"

"I don't care what I brings him in. It don't make no odds to me. It ain't none of my affair. I've got my own business to 'tend to, and when a man's got to my years he don't care to meddle in no one else's. I'm willing to bring him in not guilty along of you, Jacob Longsett."

"That's more like it. If there was more like you and me, George Parkes, we'd soon be outside of this."

Captain Rudd, who had listened to this short dialogue without evincing any signs of approbation, once more endeavoured to urge the foreman to action.

"Don't you think, Mr. Foreman, that the time has arrived for you to communicate the fact of our disagreement to the court?"

Mr. Longsett made haste to differ.

"Excuse me, Mr. Foreman, but, if Captain Rudd will allow me, I don't think it has. We haven't been here hardly any time. There's no hurry, so long as we're doing our duty. I daresay we'll all agree yet before we've finished. All we want is a little patience."

"And something to eat," said Mr. Timmins.

"Then do you mean to say," exclaimed Mr. Longsett, as he commenced upon another sandwich, "that you'd send a young lad to gaol, and blast his good name for ever, just because you're hungry?"

"May I be permitted to make a remark?" The inquiry came from Mr. Tyler. He was holding his handkerchief to his ear; his general expression was one of suffering. "Considering how little of the evidence I really heard I don't wish it to be supposed that I have any objection to a verdict of not guilty. And I may add that not only is my earache driving me nearly mad, but my health, as a whole, as some of you know, is bad, and I am easily exhausted. Had I supposed that any of this sort of thing would have taken place I should have procured a medical certificate excusing me. I appeal to gentlemen to arrive as rapidly as possible at a decision, which will enable me to obtain measures of relief."

"Hear, hear!" Mr. Longsett rapped with his knuckles on the table.

"I'd never have come," declared old Parkes, "if I'd a known I was going to be kep' all day without my dinner. When a man gets to my years he wants his victuals regular. I didn't have hardly no breakfast, and I ain't had nothing since."

"I tell you what it is," cried Slater; "I want my dinner, and I've got my business to attend to-this is the busiest day of the week for me. So far as I can see it doesn't make much difference how we bring it in. You say that if you bring him in guilty you're going to get him off: then why shouldn't you bring him in not guilty right away? If you bring him in guilty I can't help thinking that he ought to be punished-he won't care nothing for your bringing him in guilty if he isn't; while, if you bring him in not guilty, he'll thank his stars for the narrow squeak he'll think he's had, and it'll be a lesson to him as long as he lives."

"There is," allowed Mr. Plummer, "a good deal in what Mr. Slater says."